The most common cooking mistakes

Result: The flavors or textures of an otherwise excellent dish are out of balance or unappealing.

For most cooks, tasting is automatic, but when it’s not, the price can be high. Recipes don’t always call for the "right" amount of seasoning, cooking times are estimates, and results vary depending on your ingredients, your stove, altitude…and a million other factors. Your palate is the control factor.

Think that experienced cooks don’t forget this most basic rule? Cooking Light Associate Food Editor Tim Cebula was sous chef in a notable restaurant when he served up "caramelized" pineapple that somehow refused to brown. Turns out Tim had coated the fruit in salt, not sugar. "That’s why it wouldn’t caramelize."

Learn how to avoid these common mistakes for success every time, from the staff at Cooking Light..

Every cook, being human, errs, bungles, botches, and screws up in the kitchen once in a while. If you have not "caramelized" fruit in salt rather than sugar, you have not suffered the most embarrassing mistake made by one of our editors. Cooking Light did not have to look much farther than their staff―and their encounters with readers, friends, and relatives―to compile a list of common, avoidable culinary boo-boos.

The creative cook can often cook her way out of a kitchen error, but the smart cook aims to prevent such creativity from being necessary. Here are ways to be smarter every time.